Enterprising Third Sector

ACVO’s support in specific relation to the identified needs and challenges of entrepreneurism in the local Third Sector is illustrated here but is not exhaustive and sits alongside our services for the Sector as a whole. Please do get in touch with any queries. Enquiries@acvo.org.uk

If you are an Enterprising Third Sector organisation and have services, facilities, promotional vehicles or products to sell and would like to promote yourselves we are currently building up a directory here.

For news, opportunities and wider support for Enterprising Third Sector organisations click here.

This page recognises “Enterprising Third Sector organisations” as independent organisations that aspire to trade for the common good. They could be anywhere on their journey.

They may deliver services under contract with public organisations, private sector businesses or individuals. They may sell products to individual consumers within their own organisations or in public. They may hire out facilities. They may provide promotional vehicles under contract. This list is not exhaustive.

They may do so to generate unrestricted income, to create employment, to be free to innovate, to be member- not funder – driven. They will have a constitution with an asset lock but they could have one of a wide range of legal forms, including a charity registered with OSCR.

Please help to build an environment in which social entrepeneurship can grow by identifying yourself to us and telling us about your needs for and awareness of support to develop as an Enterprising Third Sector organisation please complete this brief Survey

“If human creativity and a commitment to changing the world [is] at the core of social entrepeneurship, people’s aspirations for social change can be turned into realistic, practical action on the ground, in their neighbourhoods, on their streets. … “There is a whole swathe of reports trying to define what a social enterprise is …. Social entrepeneurs are difficult to define precisely because they are being entrepreneurial. If it works, it works, no matter how you’re defining it” Lord Andrew Mawson: The Social Entrepeneur: Making Communities Work